The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

252 pages

English language

Published March 25, 2008

ISBN:
978-0-375-42404-5
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Goodreads:
2272880

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4 stars (1 review)

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives is a 2008 popular science book by American physicist and author Leonard Mlodinow, which became a New York Times bestseller and a New York Times notable book.

4 editions

Review of "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

When reading the book it reminded me what I liked about mathematics back in the school. The writing doesn't get overly complicated, it gives lots of real-life examples and offers funny insights on how wrong the intuition can be, and how often we are lead to wrong conclusions by our own thought processes.
If The Drunkard's Walk leaves something to be desired, it's managing expectations. Much of the book is about providing the (necessary) background information about probabilistic and statistical theory and its history, and the effect of randomness truly hits home only in last chapters. The whole experience is enjoyable from start to finish, so this is only a minor blemish.